flights of exotic birds floated towards them before turning
away, heading for the horizon. The great sapphire-jade sun
sank into the ocean and then rose again behind them as
they spiraled down towards a stretch of grey-black concrete
where small freighters and passenger boats stood on their
launch pads.
Aboard the ferry the excited terraphiles crowded around
their screens, pointing out the beauties of the planet. Amy
and the Doctor speculated on the population of Flynn which
could not be very considerable. The paucity of ships indicated
this.
'From what I've learned,' the Doctor told her, 'there are
only a few thousand inhabitants of the entire system. There
were, of course, many more when the planets were first
terraformed, but that was before people discovered Miggea's
strange qualities. Sometimes it seems the system returns only
minutes after she left but the inhabitants have gone through
several generations. Even without her peculiar orbit, Miggea
would still be subject to the black hole's influence on her
planets. The terraformers were able to fix Flynn's appearance,
but beneath those rolling hills, woods and lakes all kinds of
changes are taking places. The landscapes as a result become
horribly treacherous and give shelter to a whole variety of
bizarre creatures. Outside the settlements you must be wary
at all times. I've seen people go mad, their flesh melting and
transforming before their eyes as planets like these collapse
and reform in a matter of hours. What you see one moment
has a very different aspect the next. Believe me, Amy, trust
little - especially your senses.'
'Warning to all passengers. In five minutes we shall be
coming in to land. Please prepare.'
Amy had heard little of the engines in space but now
they roared and shook as the ship fired her retro-rockets,
positioning herself for a landing. Then came a stomach-
churning sensation of falling, a further massive blast and the
ship shook as she began to descend. The shaking became a
trembling, like a horse ridden too hard and then was quiet.
'Flynn,' said the Doctor a little unnecessarily.
Amy raised a sarcastic eyebrow.
She had to admit that it was good to breathe fresh, natural
atmosphere after such a long time in an artificial environment.
They were taken by air-buses to the special accommodation
prepared for them, arranged as a series of thatched cottages.
They each held up to eight people and were built around
a green large enough to accommodate a ground where the
players could practise all the games they would have to play
in the coming Tournament.
The games were worrying Bingo Lockesley. They were still
two players short and were due to begin their first serious
match in two days' time. Bingo was wondering where he was
going to find a good fielder and an archer before then. He
was hoping that Flynn, since it was after all the major venue
for the games, might have a few decent amateur players. As
soon as he had put his bag in his room he left for the local
hostelry, the Blue Barsoomian, to have a drink and ask a few
questions.
The regulars at the tavern were delighted to be enjoying a
shant with one of the stars of the following week's Tournament
and, when Bingo asked, they were only too pleased to
recommend their best players: 'Mad' Mac McLachan and Old
Fred Townsend. A polite enquiry gave Bingo the information
that Mr McLachan was their top archer and that he would
be out of the lock-up in three and a half weeks, having been
found guilty at the local assizes for clocking the landlord of
the Three Earthlings with a two-pint shant of Peregrine's
Best. But Old Fred Townsend was free and they were sure
he would be honoured to substitute for the Gentlemen's
missing fielder. He would be in later, if Bingo would care to
wait, which he did.
When Old Fred arrived, his step was a little unsteady,
partly because of his evident pleasure in the local beverages
but mostly because his left eye was being regrown at the eye
clinic on Murphy. Bingo wished him well and asked who he
thought their second-best fielder might be.
The Doctor and Amy found Bingo later in the snug of the
Blue Barsoomian. He had partaken a little too enthusiastically
of Peregrine's Best and felt, as he put it, about as miserable as
a three-legged cat at a greyhound race.
Bingo would later wonder if the Peregrine's plus his high
regard for the young woman, rather than his good sense,
played too great a part in his decision to take Amy up on
her earlier offer to field for them. And, since it had seemed
churlish to ask one of the women and not the other, had it
been the wisest choice he could have made? Had he been
nuts to suggest to Flapper that she might like to try out her
archery skills at the targets the following morning?
Chapter 21
The Tournament of Terraphiles
THE COINS BEING TOSSED and the order of team play determined, all
the Terraphiles, the Gentlemen, the Visitors and the Tourists,
retired to Flynn's lavishly appointed pavilion to enjoy a
few friendly pints of Vortex Water before beginning the
serious business of broadswording, jousting, quintaining,
nutcracking and, ultimately, whacking. Amy and Flapper,
having done pretty well that morning, were now officially
members of the First Fifteen, allowing the Gentlemen to
qualify, and had confided, one to the other, that they weren't
at all sure about their own sanity, having volunteered to
play in matches which, the Doctor had told them, might well
determine the fate of the multiverse.
At this stage the various species tended to group together.
The seven humans of the Gentlemen consisted rather
contradictorily of W.G. Grace, Flapper Banning-Cannon,
Amelia Pond, Old Bill Told, Hari Agincourt, Bingo Lockesley
and the Doctor. By far the largest non-human group were
Judoon who were inclined to link arms and sing, very loudly,
songs which, happily, only Judoon knew to be utterly filthy.
The Gents' complement of rhinocerids were three superb
and highly aggressive all-rounders. Their only canine team
mate, an Arfid from Sinus, tended to prefer the company of
humans. Uff Nuf O'Kay was an outstanding wotsit keeper,
able to catch arrers in all four hands, his mouth and his
prehensile tail. His best friend was the handsome centaur
H'hn'ee. The bovine whackswoman NTioo was inclined to
hang out with the younger Judoon who were all secretly
in love with her. The two avians were Aaak, the massive
hawkperson, and S'ee'ee, the equally large sparrowman
whose skills at archery were the subject of many songs on his
own planet where at least eighty statues had been erected for
him. That said, S'ee'ee was considered boastful and, while he
had been cleared by a court of his peers several years earlier,
/>
was thought somewhat cold blooded and insufficiently
remorseful of an accidental death during a friendly with
another avian team on his home planet. He and Aaak were
not close, and S'ee'ee was at the far end of the bar chatting up
an attractively crested Twitterian, one of the Tourists' best
whackers.
The energies of most of the humans in their team were
spent telling Amy and Flapper that they were rather good and
nobody could have known from their playing at the practice
nets the previous couple of days that they weren't seasoned
professionals. Hari and Bingo, in particular, devoted most
of their waking time to getting the pair's game up to scratch.
They had, in truth, become pretty passable players.
Everyone was speculating on the next morning's weather.
Flynn had in fact been picked in part on account of its variable
weather which was thought to be caused by Miggea's
relationship to the multiverse.
The evening ended early with much shaking of hands and
slapping of backs and assurances of good luck, best teams
winning and so forth. Everyone went to their beds early.
Only the Doctor stayed up later than the others, his eccentric
and complex brain rattling away like a downhill express,
He had a feeling that this tournament was going to be the
most important in the history of existence. Unless he put the
pieces of the puzzle he had been working on since he and
Amy first heard that oddly familiar voice from the area of the
Sagittarian Schwarzschild Radius, only nothingness would
extinguish their past, present and future leaving a true cold
silent void.
What part did Captain Cornelius play in all this? And,
most important of all, what caused the running of the dark
tides through the universe, perhaps the multiverse, creating
horrendously destructive storms, stealing the very light from
all the worlds? How, if at all, were these events connected?
Wasn't it stupid of him to play these apparently frivolous
tournaments and place so much importance on winning
the so-called Arrow of Artemis? Surely it couldn't be the
mysterious Roogalator? The experience of almost a thousand
years told him that the danger was real, yet nothing in that
experience had ever brought him the problems he was now
grappling with. This was nothing less than a crime against
Creation. Surely even Frank/Freddie Force, insane as they
were, were not capable of such an act?
Some of the puzzle's parts were beginning to come
together, but he knew in his bones there was little time left to
find the others. Time, in fact, was quite literally running out.
Eventually his thoughts drifted slowly into dreaming.
Since the dreams were no better or worse than the realities
he decided he might as well go to bed.
In the Doctor's dreams, various Greek gods and goddesses
took part in the Olympic Games. The prize was Life itself. He
was the only member in his team. They called him Mercury,
Harlequin. Black tides curled around his feet. He walked as if
in thick mud, hardly able to draw one leg after the other.
Amy was not exactly enjoying a restful sleep, either. Her
dreams, however, were more immediate and to do with
her failing to whack back arrow after arrow until suddenly
Frank/Freddie turned up and caught the last one. Waving it,
they put out Miggea's indigo sun. Then they put out Earth's.
Then they put out every star in the universe and she could
hear them chuckling with all the self-loathing and malice in
Creation ready to suffer for eternity as long as every sentient
thing suffered with them. She woke up, her hands clutching
for the Arrow of Artemis.
And in his own, rather narrow bed, Robin 'Bingo' Lockesley
dreamed that he had won the final game of the Tournament
and Amy Pond had agreed to be his bride. But why was she
wearing a black dress?
Bingo awoke next morning with mixed feelings. At his
best he knew he could probably beat the finest archers in
the galaxy, including W.G. Grace, but he had been known to
have some very bad days. He had a horrible notion that this
was going to be one of them.
Amy, on the other hand, showered with a song in her heart
and another on her lips. Why she felt so cheerfully confident
when she had spent such a terrible night, she had no idea.
She tossed the shampoo into the air and caught it. She even
tossed the slippery soap and caught that. If only she could do
the same with arrows, things were going to go pretty well,
she thought.
The Doctor sat on the edge of his bed trying to read back
his notes. He had a nagging feeling there was something
missing from them. Someone who was playing a crucial part
in the whole scenario. The Force Brothers and the Antimatter
Men? Peggy Steele, the Invisible Crackswoman? Brian
Abberley and the Bubbly Boys? Captain Quelch, whom he
was sure he'd seen lurking in Ketchup Cove? Who else? He
was seriously wishing he had not hidden the TARDIS so
thoroughly. He was sure it was around here somewhere.
Had they stipulated an ETA? No, it was probably connected
to an event. He should have thought this through, he knew,
before he hid it. He had a decided feeling that this wasn't the
first time he'd sort of mislaid the TARDIS.
He stumbled into the shower. He had sent his clothes
for cleaning just before he had gone to bed and they were
hanging outside his door, ready to wear. As he got dressed,
the birds started to sing. He pressed the button to open his
blinds and there was that deep blue sun rising over the dark,
burnt orange and strawberry-coloured hills. He flexed his
fingers.
Today was the day he swung his sledgehammer. And every
nut he cracked had to be a winner. He was going up against
two of the best in the game, both of them Judoon - one from
the Visitors and one from their great rivals, the Tourists. They
had been competing for years and had incredible muscle
control, swinging huge, beautifully balanced hammers. The
Doctor's hammer, of course, would not be nearly as heavy.
The sport took bodyweight and species into consideration,
among other things. This morning would determine which
hammerer would play the other. He felt more confident than
he had done the day before, even though, when he checked
his V, the bookies were favouring both Judoon over him.
More ominously, the bookies were giving both rival teams
better odds than they were giving the Gentlemen.
He met Amy outside on her way to breakfast. She had also
seen the odds, and yet she too was smiling.
'Are you reconciled to losing?' he asked.
'No way!' She laughed in his face. 'Now we know the odds
we have a better idea what we're playing against. What we
need to do. Is that nuts, Doctor?'
'There's no better way of taking your opponent's measure,'
he said. 'That's what I used to be told at th
e Academy. An
overconfident opponent is a beatable opponent. Of course,
those professors weren't always proven right...' The Doctor
shook his head as if to get rid of unwanted thoughts. He
hummed to himself, avoiding Amy's eye.
She knew only a little bit about his past on Gallifrey, and
she also knew there were some subjects she should not bring
up.
'Let's go and get some breakfast,' she said.
Chapter 22
Tournament Time
HEFTING HIS HUGE HAMMER, the Doctor judged the nut seated at the
regulation angle to the nutting pad. He had to make every
crack count. The hammer had to be brought down at a
particular spot and a properly judged speed or the nut as
well as the shell itself would be crushed. The object was to
crack the shell and leave the nut itself whole and unharmed.
Few people could achieve this with ordinary nutcrackers or
a fairly light coal hammer. Only thoroughly trained nutsmen
(or 'crackers') could achieve what the Doctor would have to
do over and over again until all ten nuts of the first round
had been cracked. He was relieved when a Judoon from the
Tourists won the first toss, even though he could choose the
type of nut he would crack.
Watched by a keen audience of 'shell-faces', as fans of the
sport were called, the huge Judoon fixed his visor in place,
flexed his powerful muscles, spat on his hands and picked
up his mighty hammer. The white-gloved Gondarlian nutter
(who was also the umpire) stepped forward to place the
regulation Brazil - a hard nut to crack at the best of times - in
position and then step back. The representative of the Visitors
checked the positioning of the nut to his own satisfaction and
gave the thumbs-up. Taking long, deep breaths, the Judoon
lifted his sledgehammer above his head. It shone like silver
as he shifted his feet in the sand, wriggled his legs and arms
a little and then, with a loud Judoon war-snort, brought the
hammer down. The tough shell appeared to be untouched
by the hammer as he stepped back. Then it fell into two neat
halves, revealing a pristine nut, ready to eat. The crowd
applauded loudly and enthusiastically with cries of 'Well
cracked, sir!' and 'Nutted!'
A popular player with the crowd, the Judoon acknowledged
its applause with a modest (for a Judoon) bow and stepped